Israel Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently about the People and the Land

By Gerald R McDermott

Widely respected theologian Gerald McDermott has spent two decades investigating the meaning of Israel and Judaism. What he has learned has required him to rethink many of his previous assumptions.

Israel Matters addresses the perennially important issue of the relationship between Christianity and the people and land of Israel, offering a unique and compelling "third way" between typical approaches and correcting common misunderstandings along the way. This book challenges the widespread Christian assumption that since Jesus came to earth, Jews are no longer special to God as a people, and the land of Israel is no longer theologically significant. It traces the author's journey from thinking those things to discovering that the New Testament authors believed the opposite of both. It also shows that contrary to what many Christians believe, the church is not the new Israel, and both the people and the land of Israel are important to God and the future of redemption.

McDermott offers an accessible but robust defense of a "New Christian Zionism" for pastors and laypeople interested in Israel and Christian-Jewish relations. His approach will also spark a conversation among theologians and biblical scholars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: May 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781493406760

Gerald R McDermott

Gerald R. McDermott (PhD, University of Iowa) is the Anglican professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School. McDermott has been the author, co-author, or editor of more than twenty books. An Anglican priest, he is teaching pastor at Christ the King Anglican Church, and is married to Jean. Together they have three sons and twelve grandchildren.

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© 2017 by Gerald R. McDermott

Published by Brazos Press

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.brazospress.com

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-0676-0

Unless indicated otherwise, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2011

Scripture quotations labeled AT were translated by the author.

Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

"Because so much discussion of Israel is polarized between uncritical fundamentalism and liberal demonization of the Jewish State, McDermott’s book is more important than ever. In addition to dispelling the myth that Christian Zionism is a new political construct, McDermott offers a balanced interpretation of Christian theological tradition regarding Judaism and a close reading of the Bible that both strengthens Christian belief and makes room for the Jewish people in their covenantal homeland. Israel Matters is a must-read for all people of faith as well as for every person interested in understanding both the place of Judaism today and the Middle East and in pursuing peace in that troubled region."

—Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation, Israel

In clear, accessible, and engaging language, Gerald McDermott tells us how and why his views have changed regarding ‘Israel’—that is, the Jewish people, the Jewish religious tradition, and the land of promise. Wary of uncritical, dispensationalist Zionism and hypercritical anti-Zionism alike, McDermott examines with skill and intelligence a multitude of complex biblical texts, historical developments, political realities, and theological quandaries. He then channels these insights into a coherent and forceful argument on behalf of a radical claim that the Church has too long evaded—that Israel, in all its dimensions, is an essential component of God’s redemptive purpose in history.

—Mark S. Kinzer, author of Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People and Searching Her Own Mystery: Nostra Aetate, the Jewish People, and the Identity of the Church

To Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, scholar, leader, and friend, who suggested this book over coffee in Jerusalem

Contents

Cover    i

Title Page    ii

Copyright Page    iii

Endorsements    iv

Dedication    v

Introduction    ix

1. Getting the Big Story Wrong    1

2. Does the New Testament Teach That the Church Is the New Israel?    19

3. Those Who Got It Right: A History of Christian Zionism Starting in the Second Century    33

4. Looking More Closely at the Old Testament: Salvation for the World through Israel    43

5. Looking More Closely at the New Testament: A Future for Both the People and the Land of Israel    55

6. Political Objections: What about the Palestinians?    79

7. Theological Objections: Is the First Covenant Obsolete?    95

8. If All This Is True, Then What?    105

9. Six Proposals    123

Acknowledgments    137

Appendix: Covenant and Land in the Old Testament    139

Notes    141

Ancient Sources Index    151

Subject and Name Index    155

Back Cover    159

Introduction

Some months back, a young Christian leader wrote to me about Israel. She is an intellectually curious, committed Christian who attended an elite Christian college.

I was raised in a conservative church, she wrote, "and naively supported whatever Israel did. We were led to believe that God had given the land of Israel to his people, the Jews, and their fight for their land in 1948 was a religious act by a religious people looking to their God.

"But then in college I read The Promise by Chaim Potok. As I read the novel, it seemed that Israel reclaimed the land not as a faith-filled people finding their God-given inheritance but as a people who, crushed and disillusioned by the Holocaust, decided they could not and would not wait any longer for a messiah. They felt they had to take the land for themselves, and they did it by violence.

So I have questioned whether that was right. Should the Jews have waited for the Messiah to return them to the land? Was their fight for the land perhaps turning their backs on God?

Problems with Christian Zionism

There was a time when I had similar questions. I had serious misgivings about what was called Christian Zionism. This was a term used for the belief that today’s State of Israel was prophesied by the Bible and would play a major role in events at the end of the world, which was said to be coming very soon. I knew it was not the Jewish Zionism that some in the West unfairly associated with the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946. (I say unfairly because there have been Jewish Zionists for thousands of years who denounce terrorist acts.) The Christian Zionism that I heard about in the 1970s and 1980s was inspired by a kind of dispensationalist theology that I did not share. I knew that in one sense all Christian theologies are dispensationalist insofar as they believe God works differently with his people in different eras or dispensations. But one kind of dispensationalism in particular held that Israel and the gentile nations were running on two separate tracks, and that God dealt with each track separately.

I could not buy that. In the Bible, Israel’s history always intersected with the rest of the world. And in the early Church, Jews and gentiles usually fellowshipped together in the same churches.

There were other reasons I could not accept that kind of dispensationalism. Some proponents seemed to think the State of Israel was beyond reproach. For example, I wondered if Israel was breaking international law by its continued occupation of the West Bank.

I knew that the Palestinians claimed that it was their land too. Many of them said they were being cruelly oppressed by their Israeli occupiers. Was that true? If so, how could the modern State of Israel be a God-thing, a fulfillment of his promises?

The New Israel

Another reason I could not accept this sort of dispensationalist approach to Israel had to do with the confidence of some dispensationalists that they knew what was going to happen, event by event, in the end times. I knew of other kinds of dispensationalism that rejected these projections. But this more popular sort proposed elaborate schedules and date setting that seemed to be nothing more than fanciful speculation.

I had been convinced that the Church is the New Israel. This meant that after Jesus died and rose again, the covenant that God had made with Israel was transferred to those who believed in Jesus. The vast majority of Jews, who had refused Jesus’ claim to be Messiah, were no longer the apple of God’s eye. They were no different in God’s eyes from any other people who had heard the gospel and had rejected it. The old Israel was no longer the true Israel. The Church of believers in Jesus Christ had now become the New Israel.

Or so I thought. This was the Christian interpretation that I had learned from Reformed theologians such as John Calvin and that was now embraced by many Christian churches—mainline Protestant, Catholic, and a growing number of evangelical churches.

So it was difficult for me to believe that modern Israel was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. The fact that most Jews in Israel were either secular or religious-but-non-messianic seemed to preclude any connection between their land and the biblical prophecies. I thought that might change if one day most Jews in Israel were to accept Jesus. But in the meantime, modern Israel did not seem related to the Bible.

Didn’t Christ End Distinctions between Jews and Greeks?

There were still other reasons for not accepting dispensationalist or Zionist claims about Israel. I was struck by Paul’s declaration in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. This seemed to be saying that distinctions between Jews and gentiles, even between Jewish believers in Jesus and gentile believers in Jesus, no longer have relevance. In other words, nothing distinctly Jewish, unless it were to find its fulfillment in Jesus, is of relevance or interest to Christians.

This included the land and people of Israel today. They seemed to be of merely historical importance. I knew their history could help us appreciate Jesus’ context thousands of years ago, but I did not understand their relevance for Christians today.

Startling Discoveries

But then I began to come across some startling discoveries. One of the first was that the New Testament never calls the Church the New Israel. That made me wonder what the relationship between the Israel of the Old Testament and the Church really was.

Then I looked further into Galatians 3:28. Paul did indeed say that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. But he also said there is no male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. I realized that there are still differences between male and female and that Paul himself referred to different roles for men and women in marriage.

Paul said wives should submit to husbands as the Church submits to Christ. He also wrote that the husband is the head of the wife. He never taught that the wife is the head of the husband. I knew that interpreters disputed the meaning of those words—whether marriage should be egalitarian or complementarian. But the fact remained that for Paul, male and female are one in Christ while remaining distinct and the two seem to have different roles.

If male and female distinctions persist, what about Jewish-gentile differences? Does that distinction also remain in the Church, where all are one in Christ Jesus? And if the Jew-gentile distinction is not obliterated by their unity in Christ, what about Israel’s distinction from the nations?

Still Beloved of God

I will never forget the day that I stumbled upon Paul’s insistence that Jews who rejected Jesus were still beloved by God and that God kept his covenant with them as a people. He told the church in Rome that they are enemies of the gospel for your sake, but they are still beloved of God because of their forefathers and because the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable (Rom. 11:28–29 AT).

I had always assumed that Paul was talking only about Jews in the past, before Jesus came. But as I looked more closely, it became clear that Paul was talking about Jews in his own day who had heard his preaching of Jesus and rejected it.

These Jesus-rejecting Jews are beloved of God, he said. Not "were beloved but are beloved." Not past but present tense. Even though they chose not to believe the gospel, they are still beloved of God. God still loves them. And not in the way that God loves all people, but with a special kind of love. That is clear from Paul’s long discussion of Jews in Romans 9–11.

Their gifts and calling were still in place. Their calling was their covenant, enacted when God called Abraham into a special relationship with himself, so that Abraham and his descendants would be God’s chosen people.

Paul used the word covenants explicitly in this passage where he discusses the majority-Jewish rejection of the gospel: I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart . . . [for] my kinsmen according to the flesh . . . [because] to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, . . . and the promises (Rom. 9:2–4).

At first I was confused by Paul’s reference to (plural) covenants. Then I saw that Jesus spoke of the "blood of the covenant" (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24), suggesting there was one fundamental (Abrahamic) covenant and that the other covenants, such as the Mosaic and Davidic covenants, were aspects of that one basic covenant with Abraham.

A Future for Israel

This new understanding—that God continued to honor his covenant with Jews, even those Jews who rejected Jesus—opened my eyes to other things.

For example, I came to see more clearly that most of the major biblical prophets predicted a future return of Jews to their ancestral land. For a time I thought that must refer to the return from Babylon after the exile. But then I saw that both Jesus and the apostles said there would be a restoration of Jerusalem and Israel in their future, and that this restoration would affect the rest of the world.

Jesus said that sometime in the future all the Jewish tribes of the land would mourn him and that his apostles would judge those tribes (Rev. 1:7; Matt. 19:28). That did not happen in his own day and has not happened since. It can only mean, it seems, a future coming by Jesus to the land of Israel when the Jewish tribes will still exist.

It also means that at that future time, things will happen in Israel that do not happen in the rest of the world. That means there will be a distinction between Israel and the world—the very kind of distinction that I previously thought was impossible after AD 33.

Peter said in Acts 3:21 that a future restoration of all things was yet to come. For restoration he used the same Greek word for the return of the Jews from all over the world to the land of Israel that was used in the Bible of his day. So Peter was saying that after the resurrection of Christ there would be another return of Jews to their land.

That never happened until 1948 when the modern State of Israel was established. Could, then, the modern State of Israel have some connection to biblical prophecy?

When I started reexamining this question, I looked more closely at recent history. I discovered, among other things, that the founding of modern Israel was both secular and religious. There were secular Jews and religious Jews among the first Zionists. It was not a purely secular affair.

What about the Palestinians?

I also learned that while there are Palestinians who are unhappy with Israel and its occupation of the West Bank, there are two million Arab citizens of Israel, and most of them are thankful to be living in the only state in the Middle East with religious freedom. They are grateful to be able to participate in the most vibrant economy in the region, and one of the strongest in the world. Some of them even believe that Israel was chosen by God to have the land.1

When my son and I hiked through Galilee

Reviews for Israel Matters

[Alan Gilman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Informative and helpful. An excellent place to start with regard to the topic.

[Andrew McNeill · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very well-written book on why Israel matters to God and for the plan of redemption. McDermott takes a different approach from dispensationalists and seems to argue from a more postmillennial perspective (not that this eschatological position is necessary to see his points). He suggests that there is a clear distinction between Israel and the Gentiles even within the Christian church and that Jews should continue to keep Torah even while Gentiles do not have to. He maintains that Gentiles do not replace Jews in God's purposes and the promises made to Israel regarding land will still be fulfilled and are currently being fulfilled in the modern Jewish state of Israel. However, I remain unconvinced by his assertion that Jews should continue to keep Torah (Peter in Galatians is said to "live like a Gentile"). I also don't think he adequately deals with the complexity of the relationship between Israel and the Church. The church might never be explicitly called "the new Israel" but there is a suspicious transfer of Israelite language to the church by Peter. And Paul redefines true Jewishness in Romans 2. So there is a complex relationship that sees at least some continuity between Israel and the Church such that Gentiles in the Church share in Israel's promises even while there is still a future for ethnic Israel. But perhaps McDermott would agree with some of this and given the shortness of the book, he hasn't fully developed all his arguments here. But this is a very interesting and thoughtful book. Rated by readability and interestingness it would get 5 stars. Judged by how successful his arguments are, I think he still has some work to do.